Ford has announced that it is now preparing to test its driverless car in California early next year. This came after a successful test run at "Mcity," the fake town designed by the University of Michigan to test autonomous vehicles, as HNGN previously reported.
Ford has obtained a license for Fusion, its autonomous vehicle, to hit California roads within the state's Autonomous Vehicle Testing Program. A small fleet will first see action in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. A pair of passengers will accompany each car, with one monitoring the driving controls and the other overseeing the car's sensors, The Los Angeles Times reported. Once the test drives are completed, Ford expects to roll out the so-called "Level 4" autonomous car, which will no longer require any driver input, even in cases of emergencies.
"We've always taken the approach that we want the car to be able to handle any scenario a human would, and not suddenly throw the driving back into the lap of the driver," said James McBride, founder of Ford's autonomous vehicle program.
The current Ford Fusion prototype is equipped with four light detection and ranging sensors, which allows the vehicle to scan its surroundings, according to PC World.
With the Ford Fusion, Ford joins an increasing number of automakers that are testing fully autonomous vehicles on public streets. Google's own self-driving vehicle is already a constant fixture around the vicinity of Palo Alto, where one of the company's research facilities is located. Other automakers testing self-driving cars in California include Tesla, Mercedez Benz, Volkswagen, Delphi, Bosch, Nissan and Cruise Automation.
